May 1
Motiva Port Arthur Refinery
Port Arthur, Texas
5:21 P.M. CDT / 6:21 P.M. EDT
“Human error? This wasn’t any ‘human error.’ What the hell are you talking about—”
Unconsciously, Shane Yerkey’s hand tugged loose his tie’s knot, fumbled open the collar of his shirt.
A new tell for Shane’s staff to avoid. Apparently, incredulous fury also provoked a need for a looser neckline in their boss.
“Take it easy, Shane.”
The voice came from the figurative apex of the polished conference table—from the man Shane usually addressed as “Mr. Taylor,” one of the half-dozen men and women seated around it. They were all august personages whose own Motiva pay grades far exceeded that of their facility’s outraged Engineering Controls manager. All also studiously avoided meeting Shane’s fiery stare.
All save one: a calm-eyed stranger whose own pay grade was, unknown to Shane, as classified as was the unidentified man’s real name. His own posse of attaché-carrying minions—there were four, including the woman who stood motionless near the room’s floor-to-ceiling window now featuring a single diagonal crack along its axis—similarly had not been introduced to Shane.
Who the hell is this guy? Shane silently growled. Lawyer? Or some pencil pusher from corporate, here to stand in for our Saudi and Dutch masters? Huh … medium height, slightly balding, looks like a goddamn shoe store clerk.
He dismissed the stranger’s presence, shook himself back to the matter at hand.
“Sorry, Mr. Taylor,” Shane said, his tone and expression conveying a far different message. “But this guy is flat-out wrong. You saw the read-outs: the whole plant is blowing up, and the computers were swearing everything was running fine and dandy? That’s not any ‘human error.’ That’s programming, the damned software—”
“Your initial incident report says that a problem had been reported,” Taylor said, and consulted a legal pad before him. “By a … wait … here it is: a Ms. Golembiewski, one of your staff, who put in a request for inspection. But not as a priority. In fact, she seems to have been pretty casual about the problem, wasn’t she?”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Taylor. She was going by the computer data, and—”
The unidentified man interrupted.
“For the sake of argument, Mr. Yerkey, let’s say that nobody disputes your … I’ll call it an ‘expert opinion.’ Let’s even say that we may have already identified the flaw in your system software.”
“Then what is this ‘human error’ crap all—”
“Further, let’s also say that we know it was intentionally grafted into your computer code and that we’ve already found similar code in a number of other systems, industrial and governmental alike.”
Yerkey frowned. “Sabotage? You think somebody … then what the hell are you—look, what’s going on here? Who are you? What are you?”
“I think you know what I am, Mr. Yerkey.”
“I don’t get any of this.”
From Taylor, at the head of the table: “We were attacked, Shane. As sure as Washington was attacked yesterday. Mr.—this gentleman, I mean—is from … from the government. A very special branch of it. And the government asks that we—all of us—attribute what happened here to an accident. For the present, that is.”
“But why?”
Their visitor again spoke. His tone was not quite condescending.
“You don’t catch a burglar by telling him you know he’s coming to your house next, Mr. Yerkey,” he smiled. “Do you? A verdict today of ‘human error’ might amuse him—but it’s less likely to alert him or warn him off, either.”
“Bullshit. If you’ve found the software in other systems, he’ll know when they don’t go up in flames.”
Shane’s voice broke, and he stared at the visitor. Then he pointed to the window; in the near distance, the expanse of ruined refinery still sent billows of black smoke into the sky.
“My God. You don’t catch a bomber by letting his bombs go off either,” he said, finally. “You defuse the damn things first.”
“And we will. Most of them. Those at the most strategically important sites. Those facilities where it might be logical to assume that the malware coding was discovered routinely and deleted.”
“You know how many people died here today?”
“Yes, Mr. Yerkey. That is, I know what your board says is the current death toll. I expect it will rise. Here and elsewhere.”
“That’s the most cold-blooded, screwed-up thing I’ve ever—Mr. Taylor, you can’t expect me—us—to go along with this damn lie? We can’t pretend that…”
Shane continued, alternating between imploring and infuriated; Taylor registered only his intonations, but as if from a distance.
The executive had already seen the PowerPoint presentation the visitor had thoughtfully prepared, had heard his proposition, had listened to his promises.
Taylor had even argued the same position that Shane was now taking—first, with the others seated around him, then via the subsequent conference call with their own superiors in Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands.
‘Act of war.’ Now, that’s a hell of a phrase, isn’t it? Taylor reminded himself. Something insurance companies tuck into their policy limitations. Boilerplate, routine … but something that can make those policies worth a fraction of what you think your coverage is.
If that, even.
Sure, even our new friend agrees that there has been no declaration of war; right now, nobody even knows for certain who did it. Terrorists? Okay, but hard to drop a bomb on a description, or even a movement, right?
Harder still to declare war on an ideology, you’d think.
Look at history: We didn’t declare war on Al Qaeda in 2001, did we? And the courts ruled that insurance had to pay the World Trade Center claims. How about that, new friend?
But he had an answer for everything, it seems. Yeah, by and large I’d agree with him: A nuclear bomb is something a nation-state builds. Usually, a bunch of rag-tag terrorists can’t.
Probably a nation behind it, then—and that’s something you could declare war on, just before turning their country into glowing green glass…
Tried to argue that nobody bombed us; pretty weak argument, even I knew that … and a pretty catchy phrase he answered back with: ‘software bomb.’
Okay, I guess a terrorist could write up a software bomb … but something sophisticated enough to do this level of damage? Okay, I agree with him on that too: It points to a nation-state, not some discontent tapping a keyboard in a damn Internet café.
And if it is a foreign nation, and our country found out … Yes, easy to imagine Congress voting for a war declaration on somebody.
Taylor heard his name, and tuned back into the present: Shane, still arguing. The man can’t seem to understand it’s already a lost cause.
“I’m listening, Shane. We all are. Continue.”
Immediately, Taylor’s mind returned to its own musings.
Can you declare war retroactively? I argued that point, too.
Turns out you can. Learn something new every day.
Back in ’41—our friend is quite the historian, isn’t he? Even had it in his damned PowerPoint—Roosevelt formally asked Congress to confirm that ‘since’ December 7, 1941, a state of war ‘has’ existed.
Kind of a formality, but that’s how you do it legally.
That was on the 8th; no question that Roosevelt made a retroactive declaration of war.
One day after the fact.
And it was legal; not even our own lawyers dispute that.
So this time around, Washington itself was attacked. What—about half a day before my refinery was hit? From what we’ve heard on TV, the attack on us was about the same time the President died. Assassination of a nation’s leader is definitely an‘act of war,’ even if you don’t count what happened to D.C.
Unconsciously—even as Shane stuttered out what Taylor also believed any sane person might recognize as a plea for reason—Taylor shook his head.
‘Since.’ ‘Has.’ Two words, that’s all.
The President—our new one—could say them again.
Or not, our friend here says.
For instance, he suggests, what if the President instead says ‘effective upon this Congressional vote?’
One phrase; five words. A hundred billion dollar difference, perhaps more, for us. And that’s just the insurance, not the impact on our stock price.
‘Human error?’ Sure, as our new friend here pointed out, that does make the company legally liable for death-and-dismemberment claims—but if the market thinks we’re covered for any costs, or at least thinks so for the next few days, the stock hit we take will be far less catastrophic than if they think we’re facing a completely uninsured loss.
Taylor nodded, unconsciously, not noticing the flash of hope that the gesture brought to Shane Yerkey’s face.
It’s not fraud, not really. If this all comes out later, the government stipulates that we were acting on their request. Might get sticky at the SEC … probably not, though. The securities guys are the government, or at least part of it; my God, it’s the damn government that wants us to do this.
Risky? Hell yes, but better than the alternative.
It’s possible that no insurance money will ever be paid to us anyway, whether we go along with all this or not. But either way, we could be tied up in the courts for years. ‘Could be?’ Call it a veiled threat, but what I heard him not-quite-saying was that the government would make sure it will be a long process indeed…
I like our new friend’s other idea much better.
A sweetheart deal: government reimbursement for any injury claims. An assured, government-subsidized, no-interest ‘reconstruction loan’—not to mention the long-term tax ‘relief’ he guarantees.
Taylor sighed.
Out of my hands, anyway. The guys in Dhahran and The Hague called this one a ‘no-brainer.’
• • •
Abruptly, Taylor noticed that Shane had stopped talking, was now staring at him in what the executive recognized was an impassioned plea.
He took a deep breath and knew how Pontius Pilate must have felt.
“It’s a matter of national security, Shane,” Taylor began.
• • •
Before he left the conference room—before he headed back to the chaotic remains of his much smaller realm, to direct Carol Golembiewski to accompany him to his own office where a pair from the government delegation would be waiting—one of the silent minions slid a single piece of paper in front of Shane and handed him a pen.
He only vaguely noted the wording above the signature line, indicated by a single-tapped finger.
“I, the undersigned,” it read, “accept and understand that I have been informed of classified information, and that any disclosure thereof is a violation of Federal statute. I do hereby swear or attest that I will not disclose said information under Penalty of Law, including fine or imprisonment or both…”
There was more, in language even more severe and forbidding.
It did not matter, not anymore.
As he had been ordered, Shane scrawled his signature on the line.